Engineering Life: Advances, Challenges and Opportunities of Growing/Remodeling Living Systems

Dear Colleagues,

Life is distinct not only because of its evolutionary history and manifold function, but because its unique complex structure and organizational behavior. The ability to grow and remodel in response to diverse stimuli is one of the most remarkable differences of living matter compared to ‘classical’ engineering materials. These phenomena play important roles, e.g. during morphogenesis in early life as well as in homeostasis and pathogenesis in adult tissues, which often adapt to changes in their chemo-mechanical environment as a result of ageing, diseases, injury or surgical intervention. However, such mechano-regulated growth and remodeling processes are not only observed in humans but also in lower organisms or plants. With today's technologies (3D cell culture, bioprinting, vascular engineering, advanced bioreactors, smart biomaterials, stem-cell differentiation, and microfluidics-based physiological platforms), it is possible to control cells and their environments more precisely. This way we are able to engineer and manipulate living tissues and complex organ(oid)s for potential clinical use. In addition, synthetic life experiments attempt to probe the origins of life, study its principal properties, or – more ambitiously – to recreate life from abiotic components.

This Special Issue will contain a selection of papers highlighting recent advances in tissue engineering and synthetic biology. We welcome the submission of original article and review manuscripts focusing on the growth and remodeling of living systems. Understanding of how they grow, develop, adapt, and evolve is still one of the most important challenges in biosciences.

Dr. Marcus Krüger
Prof. Dr. Heike Walles
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Life is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.